Stacy trudged dejectedly toward the Morgendorffer house. It had been very trying these past two days. Usually her subscription to Waif meant that she got her copy ahead of the other members of the Fashion Club, who prefered to pick theirs up at the convenience store on their way to school.
But now her issue had been delayed in the mail, probably because of the latest Anthrax scare. (Those metal heads can be so rude, she thought.) Still, she had finally recieved her copy this afternoon, and had taken it with her to read at the dentist's office.
It had been shear h-e-double toothpicks, listening to Sandi, Quinn, and Tiffany whisper among themselves about the issue after having put her on temporary leave-of-abscence until she had gotten and read it. Well, now she had, and now she was ready to rejoin the others.
Except not really. Her jaw was still numb from the novocaine and she had a headache from the gas, and she just felt icky all over, like when you want to do something but you really don't want to do it despite the fact that you wanted to do it and looked forward to it but not really, you know?
She stopped and rubbed her temples.
Finally she walked up to the door, wishing she felt up to glorying in the fact that she had been right and Tiffany wrong about this month's accent color, but her heart just wasn't in it. It all seemed to be ashes in her mouth.
Or maybe it was just residual cotton stuffing.
She knocked on the door. She waited a moment and knocked again.
She could see Quinn's weird sister sitting on the sofa, reading a book. She knocked on the door again, and the girl looked up, puzzled, and cocked her head as if trying to hear something. Stacy knocked a trifle louder, and she looked at the door. She rolled her eyes, put the book down and walked to the door.
She really wished it had been Mr. or Mrs. Morgendorffer. Quinn's sister made her really nervous, like maybe she resented being refered to as a cousin all the time, or other things.
Stacy swallowed hard as she opened the door. She wished she knew the girl's name, but she kept forgetting it. Maybe she'd like to be called that from time to time, instead of Quinn's cousin, or live-in maid, or exchange student, or "yooour thaaaat giiiiirlll."
She wondered...
"Well, are you coming in, or do you merely wish to stand there with a vacant expression the rest of the night?"
Stacy blushed, muttered something, then squeezed past the girl.
"They're up in Quinn's room, if you must know." She looked Stacy up and down. "At least you look normal." She went back to the couch, sat down and returned to her book.
Stacy went quickly up the stairs, wondering what that weird girl meant.
As she approached Quinn's room, she smelled something strange. It was incense. Sandalwood incense, like her big sister would use to disguise the smell of... Oh, no, she thought, we're not going through [i]that[/i] again!?!
She didn't like it, it made her feel all weird and hungry and stuff.
Then she heard the strange music, some sort of jangly stringed instrument, oboes or something, and drums.
Then there was the chanting...
Stacy was almost afraid to open the door.
Finally, she grasped the doorknob and opened wide, then stared dumbfounded as the sandalwood smoke poured over her.
There, in the middle of the floor, surounded with sticks of incense, was this statue of a man with an elephant's head and multiple arms. Sitting in a circle around it were her friends, Sandi, Quinn, and Tiffany, eyes closed, legs and arms in the lotus position, dressed in saffron robes and their head shaved except for long tresses descending from their scalplocks.
They were chanting quietly, "Om, Sri Ram, Jai Ram, Jai, Jai, Rama, Om. Om, Sri Ram, Jai Ram, Jai, Jai, Rama, Om."
Stacy nervously cleared her throat.
Sandi took a deep breath and exhaled, slowly opening her eyes, which took on a look of pitying disdain on the poor girl, a look Stacy usually feared, but now all she could do is stare open-mouthed.
"Namaste, Stacy," she said, "I can, like, see you're still waiting for your copy of Waif to arrive."
"N-n-n-no, Sandi, I... I got it today... What is going on here!!!"
"If you had taken the time to peruse the issue, my poor benighted friend, you would know that this is the next big thing."
"Wh-wh-what?"
"Hinduism," explained Quinn. "It's going to be bigger than midi-blouses. I can't believe you haven't read it."
Stacy pulled her magazine out of her bag, flipping through it madly.
"Thaaat's not iiiit," said Tiffany.
"Huh?" said Stacy.
"For Krishna's sake, Stacy, you haven't even got the right issue!" barked Sandi.
"Yes I do! Look at the date!"
"It does say October," said Quinn hesitantly.
"Buut it's not the riiight one," said Tiffany, holding up her copy.
Stacy blinked and stared at the magazine Tiffany was holding up. On the cover was a picture of Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction in a stunning DKNY original, with the cover blurb announcing, "Like, The Next Big Thing, Okay?"
Her eyes fell on the magazine's title. In small letters, over the name of the magazine it said, "The Harvard Lampoon's Parody of..."
She looked up at the three haughty looks she was getting. Then she melted into tears of pure, unadulterated hilarity.
Daria glanced up from Quinn's new and as-yet-unread volume of The Bhagavad Gita and stared at the ceiling. First there were peals of laughter lasting for what seemed an eternity. When this had died down, there was a brief moment of silence followed by the wails of the Damned. She wasn't sure what was going on, but she was sure she approved.
From the Iron Chef challenge by Roger Moore, a comedy with a song title.
Several years ago, The Harvard Lampoon came out with full lenght parodies of several popular magazines, like People or Vogue. The title of the magazine being parodied was full sized and in it's normal font, while above it would appear the words "The Harvard Lampoon's Parody of..." So, naturaly, if one didn't look closely enough... >;-D
Daria and other characters from the show are of course, property of MTV and Viacom. Any original characters and settings are my own. This is a work of fanfic, and is therefore a work of love and not meant for profit. And all hail Glenn Eichler and Suzy Lewis!